Amidst the mess of a photo session, a lowly 486 running Win 3.1 manages to keep contributing to this site by capturing stills from a digital camcorder.
Working the
Dinosaur
Amidst the mess of a photo session, a lowly 486 running Win
3.1 manages to keep contributing to this site by capturing stills from a
digital camcorder.
Long after similar machines have been retired to landfills, this 75MHz 486 still serves a useful, if intermittent function. While processing images for the features "It's Not that Englehard" and "Copy Cat" in the Department of Transportation (note, you need to be into 'O' gauge electric trains to get the humor), I discovered that my digital camera, an Olympus D320L, could not make certain close-up shots and still stay in focus. Coming to the rescue was my JVC DVL9500 digital camcorder, mounted to a tripod, which could zoom in and make readable the small print on the sides of the two model tank cars being photographed.
You may have noticed my new Toshiba Satellite 2805-S503 sitting alongside the 486 (not yet photograped for 'Partners in Crime'). It is currently the most powerful machine in the house, with a 900MHz Pentuim III CPU. If you know your Toshiba laptops, you know that the 2805-S503 has a built-in FireWire (IEEE 1394) port for digital camcorders like the JVC pictured here. But I haven't used the feature for grabbing digital stills yet (for that matter I haven't used it for video yet either, despite having bought this particular laptop for it's 1394 capability (okay I confess, the built-in GeForce2 Go 3D accelerator was the prime motivator, as was the absence of Win XP)
Anyway, one unusual feature of the DVL9500 camcorder is that JVC included still-image capture software that could function under Windows 3.1(Blasphemy!). Since the lowly 486 was the only machine that had a free serial port (the 4015's is occupied by the Wacom tablet, and the newer 2805-S503 doesn't have a standard serial port, only USB), it got pressed into service to run the JVC software, which despite the inherent slowness of a legacy serial port, did the job without a hitch. Proving once again that even ancient machines can be useful as long as they still work.
Oh, you might be wondering where the P-100 subnotebook went. It's in perfect health, hidden behind the 2805-S503. While I could have used it, I found it more entertaining to show a machine many would consider a doorstop candidate still doing something useful.